It was only a few weeks ago that we reported on Epsilon’s database being hacked and exposing customer data to spammers. That was a serious data breach purely because of the number of big name companies Epsilon stored customer data for. Today, on a smaller scale, but no less serious, Ashampoo has reported a similar server breach with customer data being stolen.

Chances are you have come across or used at least one of Ashampoo’s products, with their most popular being Burning Studio and WinOptimizer. An Internet company that counts over 13 million customers on its books, it specializes in offering a range of downloadable software covering disc burning, multimedia, system utilities, office productivity suites, CAD, and ironically security software too.

Rolf Hilchner, CEO of Ashampoo, has posted on the company’s website explaining exactly what has happened. Apparently hackers managed to break into one of Ashampoo’s servers that held customer data. There was a hole in their security and by using it Ashampoo customer names and e-mail addresses have been taken, but no payment and billing information was accessed.

Ashampoo believe the addresses taken are now being sent malicious e-mails with a PDF attachment. If you go ahead and open that PDF file some code is run attempting to gain access to your system through known security holes. As the hackers collected these e-mail addresses from an Ashampoo server, it makes sense that they will try and mask the e-mails as an order confirmation or marketing of some sort.

The best advice we can give is to ensure your system is up-to-date with security patches and to treat any e-mail associated with Ashampoo with caution. If you haven’t placed any orders recently, then you shouldn’t be receiving any e-mails of this sort from them.